“... it were to be wished of all wise men and Her Majesty’s good subjects,’ he wrote to Robert Dudley, ‘that one of these two queens of the isle of Britain were transformed into the shape of a man, to make so happy a marriage, as thereby there might be a unity of the whole isle.’ Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots by François Clouet ...”

“... Bywaters was particular about his lover’s camisoles and garters; he was in favour of her tight green sweater, but came out against long skirts and lace shoes. They arranged to eat a piece of Toblerone at the same time and think about each other. They did not make plans to change their circumstances by running away or by approaching Percy Thompson. What ...”

“... its grip on the population: real people, slipping off the face of that lovely ground, leaving the green – pleasant lands of Northumberland to be nearer the belly – catch scraps with the shit we set out so grudgingly on plates for the blind to eat in gratitude. What makes poetry like this so inhospitable is, ironically, its radical ...”

“... progress of her husband’s major paintings. Nivison’s impact on Hopper was discussed in Vivien Green Fryd’s book Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper (2003), which shows just how significant dysfunctional marriage was for Hopper’s art. The new Hopper exhibition at Tate Modern until 5 September seems determined to write ...”

“... were sharply cut; the spies laid their schemes not in smoke-filled rooms but by the flickering green light of computer screens. Still, it was comfort TV. It depicted a world that looked just like the real one except that nothing in it would actually come to pass. The voters weren’t about to embrace socialism, forcing the establishment to do its ...”

“... so much as seas, which, bearing ‘the liquid weight of half the globe’, crash muddily into the green Atlantic. I am thinking of favourite walks, or rather favourite places to sit when out walking, like the confluence of the Nidd and the Ouse at Nun Monkton near York, or of the streamlet behind our local pub and the River Wye, where sometimes at twilight ...”

“... and his criticism of US policy – not to mention his arrogance and outlandish ambition,’ Robert Gates, then deputy national security adviser, recalled in his memoirs. But​ Netanyahu had his sights set on taking over Likud, not on peace in the Middle East; he was performing for the audience back home. His fusion of bombast and calculation ...”

“... Robert Burns wrote about art, friendship, religion, animals, drink, marriage and love. The First two and the last of these themes – poetry, sociability and sexual adventure, to call them by other names – commemorate activities which enabled him in youth, as did his drinking, to face the prospect of a lifetime’s hard labour on the land ...”

“... for anyone who has not done it. We can know her preparations. The ones who were useful to her: Robert Lowell (her teacher and the author of the introduction to the US edition of her posthumous collection Ariel), Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Stevie Smith. Adrienne Rich, envied and wrestled with as an equal artist. Eliot and Yeats, her early ...”

“... from Arthur’s Seat to the Highland Church and on to the Castle Rock. Motherly, rounded, green and tender are the great Pentland hills, Caerketton and Allermuir, watching over Gilmerton and Straiton and the city beyond.In another sense, though, Edinburgh did adopt him. His talents took him to the Royal High School, where William Drummond, Henry ...”

“... crucial analytic concept after her: the Female Ovation Complex, perhaps. And indeed, why not? As Robert Gottlieb’s concise yet stylish new biography reminds us, the great actress’s sumptuously chequered life would have presented even the most dimwitted Viennese shrink with a veritable orchestra pit of things to quiz her about. Consider, Herr Doktor, some ...”

“... voluptuous rebirth.’ There aren’t many skeletons left in Hardwick’s closet. Since 1973, when Robert Lowell published The Dolphin, a series of sonnets based on Hardwick’s letters to him during the breakdown of their marriage, the story of her life has been bound up with, and contorted by, his overbearing presence. Cathy Curtis, author of the first ...”

“... by more than half the 35 contributors, few of whom bother to make it clear whether they mean Robert Lowell, or Allen Ginsberg, or the Black Mountain imitators of William Carlos Williams. ‘The Liverpool Poets’ are regarded with a mixture of fear and derision. ‘The ranks of the illiterate raise puerile and rhythmless voices,’ wrote Roy ...”

“... conservative Midwestern town, but there is no follow-up on this broad hint. The youngest brother, Robert, stayed in Ohio. James described him as a ‘Babbitt’ – a smug materialist. He too was a published author, though his book was called The Successful High School Athletic Programme. Purdy remarked that if Robert or ...”

“... well above the knee’. That, too, is familiar. In They Came like Swallows, the older boy, Robert, is a natural athlete, but one of his legs has been amputated and he wears a false limb. And in So Long, See You Tomorrow, the narrator describes how, when his brother undressed at night, ‘he left his artificial leg leaning against a chair.’ In that ...”